-- INTRO --
Chris Moriarty
Hello and welcome to the award winning Workplace Geeks, the podcast on the mission to unlock the world's most fascinating workplace insights. I'm Chris Moriarty,
Ian Ellison
I am Ian Ellison.
Chris Moriarty
and think of us as your inclusion investigators, exploring the principles of design that celebrate cognitive diversity and challenge one size fits all.
Thinking. Join us as we uncover how truly inclusive workplaces are built, not just for the average, but for the wonderfully varied ways people perceive, process and perform. So last time we were with you, we were exploring poetry,. Which was a bit of an about turn from the usual workplace content we serve up, but it did allow us to look at things through a slightly different lens and totally inspired by that we had someone get in touch to recommend some more of the same, didn't we,
Ian Ellison
We did indeed. So, feedback from a good friend of mine, actually, Lance Hamilton Griffith, he said, liked poetry episode, you must check out David Whyte. His insights, words and poems have changed my approach to the workplace topic. So I'd never heard of David Whyte before, so I did a quick. Bit of digging. And David Whyte is a British American poet and philosopher known for blending poetry, philosophy and leadership.
His work often explores the intersection of work, meaning and the human soul, using the poetry as a way to illuminate the deeper emotionally and existential currents, Christopher, of professional and personal life. So one book in particular, poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America from 1994 is apparently a seminal piece in Whyte's career and also a foundational text for those interested in soulful leadership and meaningful work.
Part memoir, part philosophical essay, and part poetic meditation on a number of different themes, which are very, very relevant to the stuff that we always talk about.
Chris Moriarty
Now there's me thinking like how unusual a poetry episode was, and this could start something altogether different. Anyway, look, we love getting feedback from our listeners, and remember, we've made it even easier for you. So not only do you have the opportunity to shout us up on LinkedIn, search for Workplace Geeks, hashtag Workplace Geeks, or email us.
Hello, at Workplace geeks.org. You can also leave a voicemail on our dedicated Workplace Geeks hotline. So that means that whilst you're listening to us probably on your phone, you can quickly hop onto the first link at the bottom of your show notes, and click the Handy Workplace Geeks hotline.
Follow the instructions to record a voice message, and your dulcet tones could be joining us right here on our very next episode. And whilst we're in admin mode, we should probably tell you about a new Workplace Geeks Project. We are launching a webinar series. We realized that we talk a lot about theory on here with some mega brains, which we love doing by the way.
But folks are always asking us about case studies, so we figured we could do that on some webinars where we get workplace teams to show us what they've been up to, and we can bring our usual workplace geeks interrogation. To that story. So Ian, do you wanna tell the folks who we got lined up for our debut webinar?
Ian Ellison
Yes, indeed. So under the banner of Workplace Geeks Investigate for our first webinar, we're gonna be joined by Josh Jackman from Art Health Solutions and Chris Higgins from GSK to talk about GSK’s new global HQ in London.
This project set out with an aspiration of being one of the world's healthiest buildings, and also to provide an evidence base to measure, test, and hopefully substantiate this aim.
So a perfect opener for the Workplace Geeks Webinar series.
Chris Moriarty
I agree. So check out audiem.io/webinars or take a glance at the show notes for more information on how to register for it. It'll be taking place on the 11th of June, 2025, but if you are listening to us from some point in the future, and that date has already passed, you can still go on and watch it on demand. Anyway, on to today's guest, Ian. Let the listeners know who we have with us today.
Ian Ellison
So we've had some heavy hitters on the show before Workplace OGs, like Jeremy Myerson and Alexi Marmot, and this episode is no exception because yet again, we are joined by Workplace Design Royalty. In the name of Kay Sargent, senior Principal, director of Thought Leadership and Interiors at Global Architecture and Planning Behemoth, HOK based out of Washington.
Now Chris, you've known Kay for over a. Decade. I'm a tad embarrassed to say that she only popped up on my radar a couple of years ago at Workplace Trends when she was beamed in from the states to discuss some new HOK research Into neurodiversity and neuro inclusive design,
which brings us to her brand new book, designing Neuro Inclusive Workplaces, advancing Sensory Processing and Cognitive Wellbeing in the Built Environment. Kay was over in the UK a few weeks ago on a book tour, so we took the rare opportunity to actually sit down together in real life down at HOK's London office.
Chris Moriarty
And we've dragged back former guests. Josh Artus, for our reflection section. Now, you'll remember he spoke to us about his work on neurodiversity and workplace design in the last series. So we thought he would be a perfect reflection section. Guest, so stay tuned for that.
Now, quick warning on that reflection section. By the way, I'm definitely there at the start of that discussion, but owing to some technical difficulties, I go a bit quiet halfway through and that's quite rare for me. So I suspect some of your eagle eared, can you say eagle eared? Uh, some of your Eagle eared listeners would've noticed, right?
That is definitely well and truly enough. Intro, let's get to Kay Sargent.
-- INTERVIEW --
Chris Moriarty
I was just saying to him before we started, I think we met 10 years ago, so I know a lot about you. Kay. But for people that are listening that don't know much about you, tell us who Kay Sargent is and what you do.
Kay Sargent
The, the true story or the, the stuff that you might have heard? No. Uh, so I am a practicing designer of 40 years. This is when you're supposed to say, I don't look that old, but yeah. Right. Thank you.
Right. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Uh, I am the director of Thought Leadership for Interiors at HOK. I've been there almost nine years now. And I work with our clients that have big portfolios all around the world, are trying to figure out what's happening and what's going on. And for those clients, they don't like a lot of surprises.
They kind of wanna know what's coming. So we do a lot of future casting, we do a lot of thought leadership, uh, and really dive into a lot of topics that we think are really important that our clients need to be tapped into.
Chris Moriarty
And has that always been the case?
Is that kind of something ink's, DNA in terms of that kind of research led evidence-based design? Or would you say that's something that's kind of developed and evolved?
Kay Sargent
well that's an interesting question. I, I think designers have always really kind of led with evidence. Some designers, not all. I think a lot of them actually, quite frankly, focused on trends, and I think that's a huge problem.
But HOK has always been a big advocate of thought leadership from within. So we're actually one of the few firms that doesn't have a bunch of paid. Researchers on staff because we believe that all of our teams that are embedded with our clients that are working on this stuff, they have a lot of intrinsic knowledge and leveraging that knowledge.
And so we actually set up several years ago a research initiative within the firm so that anybody that has an idea that they want to explore can come forward and get funds and time allocated for them to be able to explore that. And sometimes they're gonna bring in partners to help them do that.
Sometimes we have competitions to drive ideas, but it's really about, the issues at hand that our clients are dealing with or the things that we think we need to be addressing that we're not.
Ian Ellison
Does that mean that people learn more about research and research methods and sort of knowledge creation whilst they're there? Or does that mean that you look for a particular skill set for your HOK people?
Kay Sargent
Uh, I think that for us, design excellence is kind of the bar that we're always striving for. So we're, we're always gonna go for that first.
We have some people that are just, you know, knowledge geeks. I would probably put myself into that. My superpower would be curiosity, right? I always wanna know more. And so there are people like that, that just kind of dive into topics, and they love that there are other people that might have a great idea, but may not have the chops to really do the research.
So, in those cases, and in many cases, we actually bring in experts. We partner, we actually believe that rather than having people embedded in our firm that are researchers, that if there's a specific topic out there, go find the experts in that topic and partner with them. So we've partnered with Berkeley Center for the Built Environment, uh, university of Cambridge Genius within like a whole variety of companies.
I, I can't even name the number of institutions that we've partnered with over the years. Uh. Because we seek out that special expertise that we may not necessarily have, and we find that that's, the best way to really drive innovation.
Chris Moriarty
And that's something that definitely comes through in the book.
The, uh, design and neuro Inclusive Workplaces Advancing Sensory Processing and Cognitive Wellbeing in the Built Environment. 'cause it kind of felt as well that, that there was a lot of within, and I'll let you sort of describe it in more detail, but there's a lot in here that's kind known science as, but let's bring this in.
Let's start understanding this stuff and, and applying it. But just before we dive into it, this book hasn't just sort of popped up outta nowhere. So describe the journey that kind of led to
Kay Sargent
The book we never wanted to write. it it is, it's the book we never wanted to write. So, um, it really started eight years ago when I was in a meeting with a client and as we were walking out the door, he stopped us and said, by the way, how do you design space for someone that's ADHD, I've designed every kind of space on the planet. I mean, I've designed everything and there's 40 years. It's pretty, uh, remarkable and, and incredible, and it's an honor to have done so.
But I didn't have a great answer to that. And again, I said before, like, if I had a superpower, it'd be curiosity. So I wanted to know more. So we started to do a little bit of research so I could get him a better answer. And what we found is there was a ton of information. Advocating for people that are neurodivergent and, you know, for hiring them and bringing them into your organizations, but almost nothing about the built environment.
And if you're bringing people into a space that is not well suited for them, you're setting them up for failure. So we went down into a deep dive that eight years later, I think we've done six research initiatives all around the world. We now have four major case studies that are in the book and multiple more that we've done this, we've done worked on with dozens of clients for this in every sector.
We're doing this in airports, we're doing this in healthcare, we're starting to incorporate this into our design thinking because it just makes sense, right? It does. And again, I think designers have great intuition, but. Intuition is not getting it.
Today. We have after covid, more and more CEOs are getting involved in space decisions. And isn't it amazing, by the way, how in the last five years everybody has become an expert in what we have always done, right? All of a sudden,
Chris Moriarty
the way you said that I'm like, is that, I'm not sure if you think that's a good thing or a bad thing.
Yeah. You
Kay Sargent
everybody has an opinion and you, you put something out there, et cetera. And a lot of, I mean it, I could spend my whole life just responding to stupid things I see on LinkedIn. I, I, I could and at, at, at every now and then, something will be just so insane that I have to respond, but what our clients really need is evidence-based design, and we need to lean into that a lot more.
Ian Ellison
So I think just to join a few dots, Chris has known you for a long, long time. The first time that you popped onto my radar, I was sat in the audience at Workplace Trends, and you were beamed in, you were doing a satellite
Kay Sargent
in from afar.
I like
Ian Ellison
were beamed in and, you gave a presentation. I was like, oh, okay.
So neurodiversity, HOK, have got some knowledge in this field. What you are articulating is an eight year journey to understand more. And the thing that I really noticed at the beginning of the book was, your name's on the front of the book, but you declare, we you declare a collective in getting to this book.
And you just said the book we never wanted to write. Yeah. You also talk about a moral imperative for it. Yeah. So can you tell us a bit more about that?
Kay Sargent
Yeah. So, um. Bill Helmuth, who was our CEO for multiple years and you know, was in the firm forever and he has recently passed away, and I miss him every day.
But early on in the process we started researching this topic and we kind of did it under the wire, and then we, we started to make it a little bit more official. And I will tell you the first time that we actually went to the firm in the initiative to say, we're officially doing this, I think it was like two or three years in.
Like sometimes it's good to go under the radar, but I was really nervous about going to our excom. And asking for some money to do this because it was such a passionate thing for me that I knew that if they said no, I would get really defensive and, you know, I'm not sure what I would've said. So I had one of my colleagues do it and he said, yeah, you know, they unanimously agreed to, to put the money towards this.
And it turns out that several people on our excom, who I report directly to, uh, have family members that are neurodivergent. And that is a very, very common thing that we're finding is this touches so many people that it's just staggering, quite frankly. And we were talking and, uh, somebody said, we're gonna own this topic,
and we quickly realized, you know, because HOK wrote the book on sustainability probably 25 years ago, we really did. And for a long time that was like the Bible for sustainability. And so we're gonna do that again. And we basically decided this is a moral imperative. We have to put this out there for everybody to understand because this transcends a competitive advantage.
Ian Ellison
I think that's really interesting because in the book you declare that, and then later in the book, once you've created the why and you've justified it, and then you've explained about neurodiversity so that people have a broad understanding of the moving parts and the nuances and all of those bits, you actually then start to, in some respects, almost lay out kind of how to do it, how to think about it.
If I had my head switched on, I could think really carefully about this before engaging anybody.
Kay Sargent
Yeah. And, to take it even further, this is not just about neurodiversity actually, to be honest, it's a horrible title because it isn't just about designing.
We actually don't even talk about design until halfway through the book. Our general counsel pointed out to me one time, it's like, oh, that's interesting. You're right.. But we've done years and years and years of research on workplace and that collides with neurodiversity.
And so this is not just about how to address neurodiversity. This is about how you should address all, you know, workspaces in general. It's all of our, our thought leadership on this stuff that, that we are putting out there. Now, believe me, there's a ton more that didn't make it into this book,.
Like we talk about the tools and we talk about our process. We don't say Here's every single thing that we do, but we do put it out there that these are the things that you need to be thinking about in the process. Because what's happening right now is first you get awareness about the topic. Then people wanna know, okay, well where do we even stand?
And nobody can answer. If I were to ask anybody, are your spaces designed to be neuro inclusive? Nobody can answer that question because they don't know how to, to assess that.. And if you don't know where to start, you shut down. So we talk about the process and how to do it step by step and really kind of walk people through it.
Chris Moriarty
It strikes me anytime we've talked to anyone about this topic or I've talked to anyone about this topic.
There is something about it, it never feels to me that this topic. Sits on its own in the kind of pursuit and knowledge kind of camp. There is always a human driver and that's quite often spurred out of experience.
Kay Sargent
In the book, we interviewed 20 people and it is amazing to me. I did not know many of their origin stories.
And several of them confided to us that they had never thought about it, and then they realized, huh? I wonder if my kids like, if this explains something, went back after they'd heard us talking about this, went back, had their kids diagnosed, then for many of them got diagnosed themselves and then realize I'm in a profession where I'm controlling the built environment and I'm not, my own children couldn't be here.
Chris Moriarty
Mm-hmm.
Kay Sargent
Whether it was an airport that someone acknowledged, I just never thought my son would be able to travel or a workplace where somebody was saying my own children wouldn't be able to function in this space. That was kind of clicked on for them and made them realize, I not only can do something about that, I have to do something about that, but it, but it wasn't a natural trigger for some of them and I think, I think they all probably shared that moment.
Of God, how could I have had
Chris Moriarty
just like two dots are so obvious but not connected. Yeah.
Kay Sargent
Yes.
Chris Moriarty
And that's something I, as I read through it, I was like, you know, we quite often look at the person who's divergent and, and analyze them, but actually there's a part of it I wondered about people, it's actually more about coping. My ability to cope is the differentiator because I can cope with that in the background and still function, whereas, right.
So it was, for me it's kind of like, it's the sort of basics of design.
Kay Sargent
I mean, we, we've evolved our terminology. Yeah. Because it, it does keep changing and there are some people that are, you know, very particular about, you know, how you say, what you say, et cetera.
Um, we've evolved our thinking on a lot of this, and actually probably three or four years ago we started to change the way that we talked about this to be more about sensory processing and cognitive wellbeing to maximize human. Potential or to optimize it because it does not just affect people that are neurodivergent.
What might be debilitating for someone that's neurodivergent is still gonna be annoying for everybody else.. And there's this whole great thing about, you know, people that are neurodivergent are kind of the canaries in the coal mine. Yeah. They are gonna feel it first and far more acutely potentially, uh, than somebody else might.
But it does not mean that it's not affecting everyone. And in the political climate that we find ourselves in, in the United States right now, where there are certain things around DEI that we have to be very careful about, this is not about the percentage of the population that identifies as being neurodivergent. This is about every single person on the planet, living in a world where we are constantly assaulted by sensory simulation, sound temperature, all those things, and just being overwhelmed.
I mean, we have the highest rate of burnout, depression, and the lowest rate of engagement that we've ever had. And part of it is we are just being overwhelmed as humans and to create spaces we're all can thrive, we really need to start addressing them more.
This really is affecting everybody. It's not just the percentage of people that are neurodivergent. And by the way, our research is showing that it's not one in five. So, so let's go back eight years. When we started this, it was assumed that one in eight people was considered to be neurodivergent.
Then it went to one in seven, then it went to one in six. Now it's about one in five.
And what's fascinating is if we break it down by age, if you look at the 60 year olds. In my generation, you just weren't diagnosed. You were just that hyper kid that, you know, couldn't sit still in the classroom or you were the slow reader, you weren't really diagnosed. Uh, now kids are, there's a far greater awareness and people are asking, well, why is there this massive increase?
I don't think there's this massive increase because of an environmental issue or some, you know, biological issue, even though that that could be slight contributors. I think the veil has been un revealed and unlifted and we're now understanding how many people actually have this. And we have a wave of midlife diagnoses that are going on right now.
Because if your child is neurodivergent, there's a very high percent chance, 'cause it's hereditary in many cases. Right. That, you know, the doctors are like, I'm looking at you, mom and dad. And so, so many people now in their thirties and forties are getting diagnosed for the first time ever and realizing.
That's why X, Y, and ZI
And I think this lack of understanding around this, and one of the things I think that comes, you know, that that is an issue, is there's also this assumption that everybody functions like we do. I think we all just default to that, right. You, you're, you're experiencing something just the same way I am and.
It's called the double empathy problem is that we have always been taught, you know, like treat others as you know you wanna be treated. The golden rule. That's right. The golden rule, which is, is is basically flawed and we should really think about the platinum rule, which is treat others as they want to be treated.
So do unto others, is they want to be treated. Um, and I think it's interesting because one of the things that we've been doing in some of the sessions recently that's kind of, I think a mind opener for people is to say every single one of us right now is dealing with somebody that is driving us nuts, coworker.
A podcast partner, don't look at each other, uh, a spouse, a child, because they don't do it your way. You're, you don't keep your room as clean as I do. You don't do the dishes.. You don't think like I do. You don't do things on my timeline. And again, we're all judging people by how we function.
We have to meet people where they are. And understanding that just because you don't do something exactly the same way I do does not mean you're wrong.
Ian Ellison
One of the things that I noticed about the book and I think I said a little bit about it earlier, was, yeah, after the why and then the sort of the framing and the helping people understand so they've got the context.
You get into the practicalities and we've talked about how HOK is kind of quite generous in framing the way you think about some of it. Maybe not all of it, but certainly some of it. For somebody who is new to this and who hasn't got the book yet and to inspire them to order it. '. Give us the 1 0 1 you mentioned sensory, cognitive, and performance. Yeah. Give us some of the stepping stones that just help people understand the landscape.
Kay Sargent
Well, before you can get somebody to realize they have to change something, you have to make them realize you have a problem. So let me help you understand what the problem is. I believe that for the last 40 years, we have tried to design space for the average person doing the average thing, and I defy anybody to tell me who is the average person and what is the average thing that they're doing.
What we have done to workplace is the equivalent of the fashion industry saying, okay, everybody's gonna get a size 10 unitard in gray man or woman, whether you're 200 pounds or 50 pounds, like whatever. Y'all get the same thing. If you go into most workplaces today, and specifically before Covid, there was this drive to densify and to unify everything down to the simplest thing so we could replicate that quickly.
We did not think about it from the human-centric standpoint. In general, we have made the office so generic that it's basically become one size misfit all.
I don't know a single company that says, do you have any sensitivities? So if I assign you to a desk. And basically it's whatever desk is open, that's where you're gonna get if you are sensitive to sound or visually distracted easily, or you psychologically don't feel safe in having your back exposed.
And you may not even consciously know that. And I sit you there and you're on a main corridor with your back exposed to a conference room. But where's all this noise is coming out? Your ability to function has plummeted before you've even started purely by the randomness of where I put you.
But if we can navigate to spaces and choose where to go, then you can find a spot that meets your conditions and your needs.
Ian Ellison
So autonomy and choice. Yes. And that leads us into a conversation about, for example, activity based working, which you might start to say for many people is moving in the direction of good design.
My follow up question was. What do we tend to get wrong or misunderstand even about when we do good design? And one of the things that I noticed, and it instantly was like, oh my goodness, just thinking in terms of hyper and hyposensitivity, right? Every different location within, within an activity based setup, setting, schema, whatever plan, you need two versions of them, at least.
Kay Sargent
Yes. And, and no. The challenge with activity based working is that you're choosing something based on the activity. And you don't really have, there's almost so many choices in many cases, like you don't have a home base.
And for a lot of us, we're creatures of habit, and we kind of need that home base. And especially after Covid, people are coming back to have a sense of community and a sense of belonging. Do people really choose where to sit based on the activity or based on the environmental conditions? I have 10 places I can sit in my house. I choose the crappiest spot for ergonomics and everything else, but I choose it because it's by the best window, with the best view in a buzzy space.
And I like that when I'm there. And it's from an activity space, probably the worst, but. It meets all the other environmental conditions. And so I'm gonna argue that when people choose a desk, they don't say, oh, that's perfectly set up for what I need to do. They choose it based on, I wanna be close to the window.
I want a cooler spot, I want a darker spot. I wanna be by somebody, et cetera. That's why you choose it.
We naturally have areas that are warmer or cooler, so. I'm just gonna confess, 40 years of being a designer, I cannot design a space that is a perfect temperature for everybody, but the sun moves and so should you. I guarantee that in any building, there's a warmer spot at a cooler spot depending on where the sun is and you know, whatever else. There are spaces that are louder, there are spaces that are quieter.
Ian Ellison
So this is about gradients, this is about designing in gradients and then giving people the, the autonomy to move, but shifting a narrative from task and activity to preference.
Kay Sargent
Yeah. And, and so there's two things that are critical here. Number one, you have to know what your preference is.
And our sensory intelligence is like zero,
we've just been sucking it up so long that most of us don't really understand what our own triggers are. 'cause we just have suppressed it for so long. So to make a choice, you need to know what your preference is, and then you need to know, well, where, what is it?
And right now, with all the sensors that we have in the building, those sensors can be telling you, you know, welcome to the space Ian. We know that you like a warmer space where it's sunny and maybe away from Chris.
Ian Ellison
almost like when, when a sommelier comes up and says, you've ordered the lamb sir, and perhaps you'd consider this red wine, it will go
Kay Sargent
Yes.
A suggestion based on your
Ian Ellison
an intelligent building could say what a sir might prefer to sit over in this wing this morning.
Chris Moriarty
I really, I really hope there is a technology company out there right now that's had this idea going, hold on a minute.
We could get someone in their profile to tell us who they really want to avoid that day. And we can, we can send them anywhere. But by the way. Ian's on the third floor. So there's a desk on the fourth. Don't worry, we've got you sorted
Kay Sargent
there. Listen, I know you're laughing about that, but how many people don't like where they're sitting? I actually, I actually wrote an article. Uh, I think it was six years ago intentionally to provoke people, to piss people off so that they would respond.
And I said, it's not your workplace that's driving you nuts. It's your coworkers. You are the sum composite of the five people you spend the most time with. If you are sitting by five people who annoy you, is it really the workspace that's annoying you or is it those individuals? So when people say it's too loud, it's probably because you're sitting next to someone who is a loud talker or doesn't have the right behavior, right?
It's not necessarily the environment.
Okay. So Covid allowed a whole lot of people that didn't realize, huh?
I actually can work in a different way and set it up the way I like it and not necessarily have to just default to whatever that size 10 unitard They're giving me in the office. But now all these employers are trying to get people to come back in for a variety of reasons. And I don't think it's so that we can just sit there and stare at people.
I think there's a variety of reasons why having people in the office can be beneficial, and other times it can be very beneficial to work from home. We're not gonna get into that conversation because you don't want me to get on my, my high horse, but what we know is that sensory distractions, sound temperature lighting leads to cognitive.
Dysfunction, right? Like it can make you uncomfortable. It can, you can lose your focus, you get irritated, you get bothered, whatever. And that leads to lack of engagement, affects productivity, your wellbeing, et cetera. I don't know a single company on the planet right now that isn't trying to address how do we improve productivity, leverage people to really, focus more on what we value, improve wellbeing, engagement, all of those things.
All of those things have a root cause and sensory distraction. Yet everybody's coming to us and saying, what's that great amenity that's gonna make everybody just magically come back in and solve our problem? I feel like our industry is being set up for failure because everybody is assuming that there's this magic thing we can do in the workplace that's gonna solve all of our problems.
And I do believe there's a lot we can do in the workplace. Again, make it so that people can actually function. And address the variety of needs that we have, which we're not doing in a lot of spaces today. But if I look at like, here are the 12 things that we need to do to really be successful going forward, only five of them have to do with space.
You know, the other seven have to do with, if I'm not managing, if I'm not clearly communicating, if you're not changing the way you manage by performance instead of just presence, you're gonna fail. And I believe hybrid is much more of an operational model than a workplace solution. But everybody's just staring at us like, you're gonna solve the problem.
And they're not taking a holistic approach. And I think more companies are gonna get it wrong before they get it right. But we have got to be able to create spaces that people actually want to be in and can function and be successful in.
But sound is the number one issue that comes up repeatedly. But I'm gonna be, uh, a little bit of a provocateur, hopefully. I think people get sound wrong.
So most people will say that workplaces are too loud. I actually think it's the opposite. I think that we have taken out all the background noise and we made offices so that they're too quiet. If you go to a restaurant and there's one other couple in that restaurant mm-hmm.
You're like, oh my God, this dinner is gonna be horrible. I'm gonna know everything about that couple. I never wanted to know. You're gonna hear it all. And that is far more annoying when you can hear somebody across the room and clearly understand what they're saying. That is the most annoying sound you can hear if you're in a coffee shop.
And think about how many people go and work in a coffee shop, and it's not because a coffee is cheap, right? It's because they like the energy and there's a buzz and it keeps you going and it stimulates you. I mean, if I have the choice of working in my hotel room or in the lobby, I will often go sit in the lobby just because I just enjoy that and there's this buzz.
But if you're shouting at somebody in a restaurant because you can't hear them. That's, that's horrible too. So not all sound is noise. And what we need to think about is getting the right level of sound and the absence of sound is actually triggering for a lot of people because it, it goes all the way back to the primeval sense that if everything goes quiet,
Chris Moriarty
it's either gonna start raining or the stuff gonna eat me
Kay Sargent
Something's gonna eat me, something is wrong, something is not right. Right. Quiet can actually be very unsettling and it can actually be creepy. And it's fascinating to me watching the younger generation, because so many of them are multimodal, their brains have actually been wired differently. They can't function many times without having the TV on or the, or having, you know, music playing or whatever that is stimulating their, there are a lot of people that need that, but there are people that do need quiet and we need to be able to create the balance of that.
And we need to be able to. I, I think the biggest problem with a lot of open environments is that we are totally mixing everything together. Even if you have the right components, we're mixing it together. So Ian, I'm gonna make you dinner. I'm gonna make you like a steak and asparagus and potatoes, a chocolate lava cake and a glass of red wine. But before I give it to you, I'm gonna dump it into a blender, hit puree, pour it into a glass and give it to you.
What. We are doing in most environments is we have the right kit of parts, but we're puréeing the workplace. We are not thinking about spatially zoning things so that quiet spaces are quiet. You know, most people just say, okay, you want a quiet space? Great. Put a chair by the window.
Five feet away from where people, are doing something and right next to a gathering space or, oh, people are gathering more. That's why you're coming to the office. Great. Pull out some workstations and plump it in. It's like taking your dining room table and putting it in your bedroom, but wondering why you can't sleep while the rest of your family is eating dinner.
We have got to be smarter and more intelligent, and every decision designers make. Every decision scale, mass color, temperature, light, all of that, has an impact on us as humans. And if we don't really understand that, then we could be putting people in adverse conditions without even really understanding it.
It is not about what is trending. It is about understanding what is really impacting individuals and designing by leveraging that science-based evidence-based backup.
Ian Ellison
Just thinking about color, right?
There's a tiny little side story in the book with this one-to-one in a little huddle space. It's one of those, yeah, you can picture it, right? It's like a, a small phone box for two people can just about get into, but the person, one of the people having in, in this one-to-one had to leave.
They were so agitated and it was because of how intense the color and the graphics were in
Kay Sargent
Yeah. This is the classic example of where designers, can sometimes get it wrong, right?
So we talked about good design, but good design, isn't as common as you would like to think, right? Like common sense isn't as common as we would like to think either. And so a lot of times designers will have the right kit of parts. They'll have those phone rooms for people that might be hypersensitive, they can't handle too much stimulation.
But then instinctively, we wanna make those fun. We wanna make them colorful, we wanna make them playful or inviting. It's a great opportunity, right? So we put, you know, some crazy patterns, some wild color in there. You've literally just short circuited the person that you've designed the space for. And there are other areas that you might want to have that.
But, having someone that is hypersensitive in a small confined space with something that's just really overwhelming is the opposite of what we
Ian Ellison
Well, I, my, hunch would be I think they're designing for the task as opposed to the person. And so the hyper and the hypo gets completely missed On that, take us to the difference between, and give us some examples and can you take us to SQ as well?
Kay Sargent
Yeah. So hyper sensitive individuals are, tend to be sensory avoiders. They can't handle whether it's bright lights, uh, too much sound
Or you can't handle being too close to people or sound is very distracting to you.
On the other side of this, you have people that are hypo. they actually need to move to fidget. They need to feel things. They're very tactile, they have to physically engage with things. They might need to listen to music or might need more stimulating spaces for them to function in.
So we all have those little nuances and quirk and it can change. You can be hypersensitive to one thing and hyposensitive to something else. There are times where, I like to go and sit in the lobby because I, I like that energy, but there are days where I feel like I have just had, the life sucked out of me and I just wanna be in a hole.
Right? So it can vary. And I think what's important, we talked about sensory intelligence, right? Again, I think most of us have a very poor sense of what actually are our triggers. And so there's a fascinating lady that we talk about in the book, Anne Marie Lombard, who does sensory intelligence. We had 40 people on our team.
Take an an evaluation so that we could see what our triggers might be and how we could set ourselves up to be successful. Like, let's not sit you so you can watch the whole room because you're gonna get easily distracted. Right. And it was fascinating to us, this is probably three or four years into our research, it was fascinating to us how poorly most of us were in touch with our own sensory triggers.
It was like, oh my God, that's why X, Y, and Z, right? Or this happens, et cetera. It was so eye-opening and it was really unfortunate that in January of 2020 we were working with a client. We were gonna redesign a space, they were in a call center and we were gonna redesign it for a more, neuro inclusive environment for them.
And we were gonna have everybody in the call center take the test. But we were only gonna tell 50% of the people what their triggers were and to see if they found spaces far more successfully than people that were guessing or just were leading with their instincts to see how did that impact your decisions?
And we believe that instinctively you navigate to the right spot. It might not, you may not do it in instantly.
Ian Ellison
hypothesis is, not knowing, doesn't matter.
Kay Sargent
Eventually you will figure it out eventually if you're given options and choices and you can move around. Okay. Right. Uh, and you may not figure it out right away, but you all, eventually you will.
But if you knew it. And you then knew that there were areas, like if you knew what your triggers were and I had sensors in the ceiling that were telling you, here's a space that meets your profile, you could far more easily and quickly adjust and adapt to that. Or a lot of times people won't move because it's the unknown.
So let's say it's two o'clock in the afternoon and it's getting dark where you are and the sun has gone to the other side of the building and it's starting to get cold or where you're sitting and it, a trigger came on your phone and your app that said, Ian, it's warmer on the other side of the building and brighter.
You might wanna shift and there's a space over there. And by the way, Chris, who you're trying to avoid has just moved to this side of the building. Right. And again, this is happening every time we go shopping, this is happening every time we go. The only place this isn't happening,
Chris Moriarty
is this a place where you spend most of your time?
Kay Sargent
Right.
Chris Moriarty
Right?
Ian Ellison
Something, that stood out from our little prep call when we were setting all of this up.
You talked about design guidelines and I know now from having a look at the book that you got quite close with. Well,
Kay Sargent
Yes. Something
Ian Ellison
valuable. Yes. But I sensed, well, I couldn't quite work it out. So the question is design guidelines, challenge or opportunity..
Kay Sargent
A little bit
Ian Ellison
bit of both.
Kay Sargent
of both.
So we were very hesitant. We've had this list for four years and it has evolved over time and every time, you know, there's 26 different guidelines and standards out there. Correct. And they're, very varying degrees of, well researched and, you know, just here five things. Okay. Um, the, the challenge is I don't think we need another certification process to take everybody through.
I mean, kill me now if I have to go through one more. Right. Uh, I just don't think our clients have the appetite for that, et cetera. But the other challenge is if we, as an industry. Do not come together at this, we could actually take people in the wrong direction. People that just aren't as informed, et cetera.
It's, it's like, which list? And again, if I ask you, is your space designed to be neuro inclusive? Nobody can answer that because what are we judging that based on? And so, um, we believe that the industry has to come together and to create a list, it doesn't necessarily have to be a certification, but it should be, here's what we are saying as an industry, or the best thought out things that we should, we can advise you on.
And I wanna take you back, and I'm old enough to remember this, but, you know, in 30 years ago, 33 years ago, when ADA came out, the very first thing that happened is we had to go and we had to assess things.. So ADA American with Disabilities Act, that also is very similar to the UK Equalities Act, there's, you know, different versions, but it's, here's what you need to do to make your spaces physically accessible. If we didn't have those lists and those standards, and every firm, and every company and everybody just created their own, it would be a mess because there would be no consistency, nothing to really who's right, who's wrong, whatever.
We're kind of in that Wild West territory right now, who's to say, what's the right list on the wrong list, et cetera. And so I really believe that we need to come together, and it shouldn't be thousands and thousands of pages, or items which one or two of them out there are, that becomes so overwhelming that it's just, I, I'm done.
I can't, I can't even think about that. So we have to make a, a reasonable list of things. It doesn't have to be redundant to what's already out there, but we as an industry need to come together. So
we did an assessment and about 50% of the things that we recommend in the book, we have our list of about 150 things. About 50% of those are already introduced in the well standard. And they are going through and identifying and tagging those things, saying, if you are doing these things, know that this is, helping you create a neuro inclusive space.
Chris Moriarty
That kind of links to, when I was reading the start of it,. It was quite, I think, quite brave because it would've been quite easy to go, well, no, we don't wanna help all 'cause it's very competitive. The industry is very competitive and. It struck me and it'd be good to sort of get your reflection on it. It kind of felt like being able to do more, neuro inclusive design shouldn't be a competitive advantage.
The competitive advantage might be we do that bit better or quicker or more to budget, but not that we do it.
Kay Sargent
Yeah. I mean, look, if we're the only ones talking about something, it's not gonna go far.
And I think one of the most annoying. Things for us is that when we started all of this, there was almost nothing out there on this. Now, almost every architectural firm, almost every manufacturer, almost every construction company, like everybody has put something out on that.
But that's good because that means that people are paying attention and we've hit something that they realize is important, if you wanna go fast, go alone. If you wanna go far, go together. We want this to go far. We don't want this to be a flash in the pan.
And, the fact that other people see the importance of this, I think is, you know, as annoying as it is, it's also quite frankly, what's needed for it to pick up the traction. We are getting this in RFPs now, and if we're the only ones that can do it, then you can't put an RFP out. It's not gonna be competitive.
Right. Um, so it's, it's important that we do this, but it's also important because. You know, artificial intelligence is gonna change our profession. And there are people that are saying, oh, we can take what designers do and, you know, we can automate that and make it real simple, et cetera. There is an absolute science to this and there are a lot of people out there, like when HGTV came out and everybody said, oh, I, I'm a designer, I can do it.
You know, whatever. We understand space, we understand how it impacts people, how to create solutions. And a lot of the people right now that are giving advice on this have no expertise in architecture or design and are saying things that quite frankly, we don't think are good suggestions because they don't really understand it.
Ian Ellison
So on that note, there's a lovely way to take us back to politics with a big P. HOK is a global organization. Yes, you are American. Yes. And the current government in America has a very different approach to, or attitude to, or philosophy about not just DEI. But also about neurodiversity, or at least that seems to be the narrative at the moment.
So given that HOK is a global organization and given that well is a global standard, how does politics and really powerful forces like that with groundswells of opinion for and against, how does that shift the dynamic for what the ambition of understanding is and all of that
Kay Sargent
It makes it very complicated and messy because on one hand our firm is gonna stand very. Fast and true to what we believe in and what we think is right. But on the other hand, you would be stupid to put yourself in the bullseye, I
Ian Ellison
of the nature of the administration, because of the, the way it feels.
Yes.
Kay Sargent
Um, and I think, what we're finding is that I do not believe right now neurodiversity really has not been in that bullseye target.
Because again, I can say this is not just about a small percentage of population.. And this is about, again, sensory processing, cognitive wellbeing to maximize all human performance. What we're talking about, does not just impact a small percentage of people.
It is impacting every single one of us. Okay. But I think, the other thing that's really important is that. We make accommodations all the time. You know, somebody said to me once, well, we may not be able to talk about this because you know, we may not be able to make accommodations, whatever. And I said, oh, does that mean you're not gonna be able to wear glasses and hearing aids in the office anymore?
And they're like, what? It's like we make accommodations. So no more ergonomic furniture, no more glasses, you know, none of that. Those are all accommodations and we are making accommodations all the time. And these really aren't any different. And I think there's this fear that accommodations are gonna be so costly and they really aren't in many cases if we do them right.
And designing stupid costs, just as much money as it does to design intelligently. So let's just, let's just all decide we're gonna design intelligently. And the fascinating thing is, even if you don't ask us for it, once you understand this. You can't go back to designing dumb, like our designers, it's like the light bulb has gone off.
They get it and, it has fundamentally changed the way we design everything. And this is being incorporated in healthcare, hospitalities, airports, everything that we're doing because it just makes so much sense and it's just like, wow, I get it. I understand it. It's putting a logic and evidence behind, uh, why we're making decisions.
So, we are now seeing that more and more of our corporate clients want to do this, and institutional clients and academics, want to do this because they understand that it's the right thing to do and it's good for business and it's good for their success and it's good for their people. They just may not be waving a flag out in front of their offices right now saying it because they just don't wanna get in those crosshairs.
Wow.
Chris Moriarty
So, what would you suggest to them as a, a set of first steps?
Kay Sargent
Yeah. A few things. I think if we were to boil it down to the most simple things, though, it's lead with empathy and understanding that not everybody is like you, and it doesn't mean that they're wrong, and it doesn't mean that you're right.
We need to understand that people function and have different triggers, and we're all kind of somewhere on that sensory spectrum. The second thing is stop designing for the average. We're really doing a huge disservice and we need to empower people with options and choice and some degree of control so they can get it right.
And, I'm gonna say that most companies are gonna say, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, we do that. Um, think about the modalities of work. Are you really truly addressing? We talk about the six modalities, and I think refresh is one that we see almost in no workspaces and just a space where people can just take a moment and decompress.
Or if you're being overwhelmed by something or you've just gotten off a stressful phone call. We've all had those moments where you're just like, can I just step aside for a minute? And then understand that we have to create those spaces for hypo and hyper sensitive individuals that they can navigate.
And it doesn't mean, okay, everybody that's hypersensitive over here, right. A lot of times it's about creating a zone within a zone. It might just be, I wanna sit off to the side and I want to just like, not necessarily be right in the middle of everything. Even a conference room. Some people don't wanna be at the table, they might wanna just sit, you know, on the backside, et cetera.
And then every decision that we're making, light color materials, those are all having an impact on us. And having people that really understand that I think is really essential in creating spaces where we can all then thrive. I mean, as a designer, I passionately believe that the spaces that we create are having a positive impact on people, but I also have to acknowledge that if we're not doing it right, it can have a negative impact.
And that for us. Is an nonstarter. You know, going back to Bill and going back to our, our excom and our CEOs now, we all believe that the spaces that we're creating, we want to have a positive impact. We want to create spaces that everyone can thrive in. And so, it's great to have the entire excom entire firm really behind this movement to go forward.
And I think the most fabulous thing for me is just seeing it pop up everywhere in the firm is fabulous.
-- REFLECTION --
Chris Moriarty
josh,. Welcome back to The Workplace Geeks, uh, in your debut as a reflection section guest. Now, uh, I should imagine most of our listeners have listened to your amazing episode. Let's not take that for granted.. If you could just introduce yourself a little bit and who you are, what you do. Also, what you were talking about last time, just to set the scene. 'cause it also sort of talks to why we've asked you back for this episode.
Josh Artus
Thanks guys. So yeah, my name's Josh Artus. I work at Centric Lab focused within neuroscience, understanding the relationship between health and the built environment.. And in 2018, I think it was, we were commissioned by the British Council for offices to provide a playbook and a sort of report on.
Neurodiversity in the workplace. And um, obviously as a lab focus in neuroscience, that was our game. So we combined, a team together of people from different sectors and led a report on that. And that was the content of the first episode that we got, that we did together.
Ian Ellison
And what a rapport is for PCO. A pleasure to read and you only got to the built halfway through it, which was the revelation really, wasn't it? It's like, let's think about people and management and all the human side of this before. Before we get to recommendations for space.
Josh Artus
I think there's a big thing that we try to do at Centric Lab, which is really unpack what's called the law, the LORE, of a subject. And this meant really going into the history of what is neurodiversity, what is, for example, autism and the perspectives around that and how narratives get built around that.
And so there was very kind of almost an anthropological element to it before then getting into the science. And what does science say to then go, right, how do we think about this now? In context of the built environment and the workplace and what we do.
Chris Moriarty
Well, I I interesting you sort of framed it like that as well, like looking at the law and stuff, because I kind of feel like it's definitely true of what Kay has written with the team and, and what she talked about is that you've almost got to unpack the topic first before they go. Right now we've established that.
Now let's look into. Some of the solutions and stuff. So, having listened to her, chatted through what kind of immediately jumped out to you.
Josh Artus
What I loved about Kay's conversation with you guys was the way in which she approached it. As a topic around humanity. And that the further we are as a wider, we understanding the concept of neurodiversity, the more actually we're investigating the workplace as a form of sociology and a better understanding kind of how people are interacting.
And I think as we've moved away from the kind of taylorist. Or industrial engineered approach to work. It is more how are we enriching the lives of people so that their cognitive skills or their intellect can be best performed. And to do that, you, you can't industrial engineer cognition, but it, and therefore it's more about, well, how do we support people?
To have those moments. How do we support people to have those moments of clarity? How do we allow their intellect to survive? I've talked before, that I've always felt that the sort of the workplace science sector can learn a lot from sports science.
You know, you go back 30 years and you look at, the manager's bench at a football game, and there's three blokes sitting there. One of them's got a bucket and a sponge. You'd look now there's 15. There's an array of technicians, there's an array of coaches. You may not see Chris laugh, but he will, because I'm an Arsenal fan and we always get, mocked for many things.
But we have a coach who's a specialist on set plays, and there's this notion that in order to have people make the most intelligent decision. At the most fatigued moment, they've got to be a equipped with the best tools, but also B, physiologically sustainable to the point where they can think clearly in the hundred and 10th minute of a game where they've been doing sprinting exercises with their bodies are fatigued.
So the aim of keeping that body alive is fundamental, but the support network to achieve that is really crucial. And so it goes to this point about looking at the kind of the workplaces, this culture of supporting people.
And so I think when listening to Kay really felt that, what are the therapists, what are the support networks that are there to create a culture, uh, that support people in particular who may have issues associated to ADHD or, autism, autism or other elements within neurodivergence?
Chris Moriarty
I can hear Jeremy Myerson in my ears saying, we've gotta start thinking about the workplace is a sociotechnical construct, and the way that only Jeremy Myerson can say those words,
It's interesting when you said about the, football analogy, I immediately thought of set-piece coaches, right? I like how you're linking it to performance because ultimately it gets you into kind of a marginal gains territory as well, right?
Where you go, actually, these corners just seem like their routine, but if we could really nail them, that's, that's gonna be worth 10 goals a year, which might be worth x number of points. Sort of bringing it back that idea to the, to the workplace. I just wonder whether there needs to be a bit of a mindset shift generally because there has been stories of organizations that have put like an in-house therapist into, their workplace and it's kind of been seen as a bit of a kind of a, I dunno, a bit of a gimmick or almost like a bit niche. And it's a bit kind of fluffy and, you know, it's like a tick box.
Actually, the way you're describing it is going, no, no, we're focused on performance. Like this is what we're about. If you could change that narrative to say, no, this is just about elite performance, and we realize that this, this facility, this resource is actually really important for a significant chunk of our people.
In the same way that some of the things that you talked about in your report that Kay talks about in her book, for anyone that needs different environments, for neurodivergent reasons, you know. This is another resource that we can pull on to get elite performance.
Ian Ellison
I felt it when we talked with you, Josh, kind of talking about the holistic, the management perspective as much as the built perspective. And Kay actually flipped it within our discussion with her. She flips it within the book, she flips it within our discussion. It moves from neurodiversity and neuro inclusive design and that sort of idea that folks.
Who are neurodivergent may in some respects almost perform like the canaries in the coal mine for an organization, because they're the ones that might flag stresses first. But then she said it several times. This is about sensory processing, cognitive wellbeing, and maximizing.
All human performance. So it really moved from a sort of them to a we to a collective. And that message that getting it right for the people, you really need to be foreground in getting it right for actually gets it better for everybody.
Josh Artus
So, something Kay was talking about was the experience of noise. Um, I, I'm sensitive noise. I think, Ian, we were just having a chat before about this and, and, and yourself. when you experience.
A stressor such as noise, which is this kind of unwarranted level of sound. That's how we kind of classify noise really. It's just an unwarranted level of sound. Noise, like all stimuli causes a response in the body. So our lab focuses on something called the stress response system. It's one of the regulatory processes or systems that, we have. And, it kind of does what it says on the tin. It allows our body to respond to stimuli from the environment.
And noise has a history of kind of being alert and around to danger and this goes back as an evolutionary process really allowing us, for example, if we hear a branch crack and we're going back like, no.
20,000 years, uh, it could be a predator is about to take upon us. And so our body goes through a process of, releasing hormones such as adrenaline, allowing a quick response. The problem is. When you're in an urbanized environment, that stimuli chronic, and we can go through periods of chronic stress and have issues related to that.
So we can experience things like in extreme levels, these things called allostatic overload, which is when the body can just no longer regulate its system.
So you're in the, in the workplace, the idea that a person, let's just say someone who has ADHD and autism,. When experiencing a noise like that, yes, it's a stimuli, which is gonna cause a momentary response of, Ugh, I hate this. Now, what I liked about what Kay was talking about and what we've talked about at Centric Lab is this idea that now let's add that to the presence states of the person. So a noise stressor is added. Now let's imagine, the reality that if you are working for a large corporation, these large corporations are now more than often in kind of city centers.
I dunno about you guys, but it's not very easy to live in urban. Environments when you are surrounded by things like noise, potentially fears of safety, confusion about new places in which you live,. So you might be ending up living in a home that you don't feel secure and you don't feel happy.
It is surrounded by noise. Maybe there's a high level of air pollution, all of which is causing a high level of experiential stress on the underlying factor. And if you hate where you live and you've had a terrible commuting, and you are experiencing this on a day-to-day basis. Your baseline for any new stressors is really, really low.
You're quite vulnerable.. So in this context, when someone is then experiencing this high level of unwarranted noise, there is a compounding element where the environmental and the psychosocial come together to create this kind of negative spiral.
So using understanding from that one analogy, looking at it in the workplace environment, what we uncovered when interviewing people and doing a wider range of, uh, sort of. Literature reviews about this topic, the level of almost self-hate that can occur for people in particular on the kind of sort of autism spectrum about feeling alien to that environment, feeling like the one that is the difficult one, as you said, the canary in the coal mine, the hatred within that, that can be a spiraling effect and that is where, we start to see something is.
Simple, or perhaps there's noise not just being a bad experience, but how it fits into the wider situation.
So hopefully I've given a little bit of a through line about what's something that I think Kay was really pointing to and something that we look at and I think is a really important part here. That neuro inclusion isn't just about the stimuli, it is about the total human experience about a person trying to live in a highly stressful.
Complex urban environment in 2025 and beyond. It doesn't seem it's getting much easier in the world and I think we're gonna be having more and more need for this going forward.
Ian Ellison
Thank you very much for that. So that kind of was born out of one of your reflections around what was lovely about the discussion. Anything more critical?.
Josh Artus
I wouldn't say criticism, but let's just say addition. So it was on the topic of diagnosis. In a topic that is intersectionally complex, are we identifying that more people are neurodivergent or have traits within that because of diagnosis? Yes.
Ian Ellison
is very much Kay's point, right? Which is there is, even though the numbers are going up, we have a hunch that they're even higher and it's because we're getting better at diagnosis..
Josh Artus
Yes, and I agree with that. I'm not contesting that. I think there was a point about, it was mentioned as this isn't just about the biology, and something that we do at Centric Lab is about the biology. And so first of all, when we look at something like the experience of being. Autistic, a lot of people will talk about, um, yeah, the stress, their, their abilities to respond to stress, their feeling that they are perhaps different.
In some ways, there is a strong correlation and connection to dysregulated hormonal systems. The saying sometimes there's something in the water, there can also be an increase in diagnosis because we're also seeing an increase of the biological dysregulation that can be occurring from, for example, pregnant moms.
This isn't to put it on them. There's about society, but their exposure to trauma inducing experiences or even the simple. Endocrine disruptors, these, forever chemicals, for example, that are just everywhere from, beauty products to packaging, to carpets to paint, and the way in which.
Those endocrine disruptors, what they do is they mimic hormones in the body. Um, and then the body goes, oh, I need to produce a counterbalance to that. But the actual preexisting hormone didn't exist. So this is overproduction that's going on, can be a cause to many of the dysregulations that people do experience within autism and could be a pathway to kind of having a diagnosis around autism.
Ian Ellison
So could I just clarify that it isn't uncommon, and I have had this conversation with one of my best friends who is a father of three, one of his children has had a recent diagnosis,. Which really helpful to him actually to sort of understand and be able to sort of place himself a little bit better in the world, which is kind of good.
But it obviously leads to a question about, so is it that there's more diagnosis?, What is it? Is it causal? Is there more going on in the world? Which means that's why we are getting so many more of these diagnoses. And I think what I'm hearing from you is. Yes, we're better at diagnosis, but actually there are real reasons why our modern world, full of pollutants and all sorts of things may actually be a reason for why the prevalence of neurodiverse conditions is increasing.
Josh Artus
I think that's a perfect surmise of it because effectively I think what we've unfortunately ended up doing as a society is traumatizing our otherwise normally functioning biological systems.. And I think what this really speaks to is the importance a of workplace design being free from things like endocrine disruptors. It's the point that I. There can be multiple truths to a highly complex situation, and many scientists, will point out that this is an increasingly evident pathway alongside the importance of the increasing quality of diagnosis in order to give people the support functions.
Ian Ellison
I genuinely think that the degree to which you care about this topic and will go to such levels to explain what's really important about it, even if it's like hard to wrap your head around really matters.
I'm gonna offer a really simple reflection in contrast. One of the. Sort of like light bulb moments for me, just as a workplace professional was the difference between hyper and hypo. And what that really practically means when it comes to workspace design. The fact that in a world which has been obsessed with activity based working, for example, for such a long, long time, and you go, well, we need to provide spaces to do this, and spaces to do that, and then we empower people to move around and have choice, and this is a better way of working, you instantly go. You need to think about the hyper and the hypo, and then that's more choice, which is far better for people to be able to perform. And it's so obvious in hindsight, but it takes thinking about neuro inclusive design to be able to unlock it. And then there's almost no going back. I felt from that.
Josh Artus
Yes, I, I completely agree. I think it comes back to that point of you can't industrial engineer. This concept of thought and cognition and to think about being neuro inclusive, in that space. It's not about the ergonomics. They're important, but it's the state at which a person's arriving in that moment.
And that's the cultural aspect of where workplace culture and workplace design combine.
You can't be your best if you can't be your best self.
Ian Ellison
Let me ask you one last question then. Because HOK have been so invested in this topic for such a long time and Kay has kind of been like the, the spiritual leader of this, the figurehead for it. It feels like they've got this view of the landscape about the.
Governance structures about the different certifications that might exist to be able to badge whether you are in your inclusive or not, from your perspective, from Centric Lab, from your work with. BCO. Do you feel optimistic about the future?
Do you think things are improving despite stuff like the current United States government narrative, which seems to be denied the existence of some of this stuff? Are things moving in a good way, or is there still tons of work to do?
Josh Artus
I think by the fact that we're having this conversation about other work that has taken place, there is room for optimism. Just because one group of people are being disgusting doesn't mean that we'll always be in that state. As someone said when they typed into ChatGPT, they just realized that humanity is woke and that because we have always been moving towards an arc of justice.
So I think yes, I always move forward with, with a sense of positivity, um, in this space, uh, that, that doesn't announce the difficulty. Uh, yeah, I don't, I dunno how much more to answer that. I, I think I am positive. Um. It does at some point ask for a almost a reflection process on. This is gonna sound again a little bit woke, but like the overt capitalist nature of work.
How much are you trying to treat a person as a commodity and extract value from them?, Of what point can you treat someone like a product and try and extract value outta them. I think that is the long-term question in which I think this is beginning to open up.
Ian Ellison
What a lovely ethical way to finish. Josh, thank you so much for joining us for that, thank you for giving it your all as well because I can tell how much this means to you. So thank you for considering everything with such gravitas and commitment, and we look forward to having you back on the show soon.
Josh Artus
Thanks guys.
-- OUTRO --
Chris Moriarty
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